Head and neck restraint systems are known and are typically mandatory in racing events to help reduce injury and death during an incident, such as a car crash. Conventional high performance restraint systems typically include a safety belt, restraint device that is generally yoke-shaped and has a rigid collar portion that fits behind and partially around a user's neck and rigid stabilizing components that either fit over the upper torso front, down the upper torso back, or both, and that is associated with the safety belt, and a helmet attached to the restraint device by a tether system that allows for some degree of movement of the user's head.
Conventional high performance restraint devices are constructed such that the collar portion and the stabilizing components are rigidly fixed with respect to each other to act as one monolithic structure. The rigidly fixed relationship between the collar portion and the stabilizing components is a compromise driven by fit and comfort that influences the kinematics and analytical dynamics of the system such that the optimum desirable biomechanical characteristics to protect the user during an incident may not be achieved and, therefore, the user's ultimate safety may be compromised.
Furthermore, the rigidly fixed relationship between the collar portion and the stabilizing components of conventional high performance restraint devices inhibit a user from readily using a restraint device designed or configured for one seat and seating recline angle in other seats and seating recline angles, for example in different types of race cars. This may require a user to invest in multiple different restraint devices for each different race car they operate in order to provide adequate fit and comfort such that the user's safety is not compromised. Due to the influence of body type on effective seating recline angles, this may also require race teams to invest in multiple different restraint devices for users of the same race car with different body types in order to provide adequate fit and comfort for each user such that no user's safety is unnecessarily jeopardized. It also limits the opportunities for users to share a restraint device.
In addition, mass production economics dictate that the rigid stabilizing components of conventional high performance restraint devices have to be manufactured in a limited range of body contouring shapes yet still aim to meet the needs of a wide range of user body types. Manufacturers offer a variety of supplementary padding systems to try to help mask the resulting inherently limited fit and comfort. These padding systems have variable degrees of success in addressing comfort and fit and may introduce an additional level of instability into the systems such that a user's ultimate safety may be compromised.
It would be desirable to have a restraint device that, by permitting a degree of relative articulating movement of the collar with respect to the stabilizing components, improves the biomechanical performance of the restraint system and allows for one restraint device to be used by a wide variety of different users in a wide variety of different seat and seat recline angles, and by the manner of construction of its stabilizing components offer enhanced standards of comfort, fit and reliability.